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Jewish World Review
How aspirin works
By
Marshall Brain
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | (MCT)
For tens of millions of Americans, the word "headache" has one response: Aspirin. Aspirin is good for relieving headaches, muscle pain, joint pain and so on. Aspirin can cut down on inflammation and reduce fever as well. Tens of millions of Americans also take aspirin every day as a way of guarding against heart attacks and strokes.
How can aspirin do all these different things? And how does aspirin actually locate the pain and eliminate it? Let's find out.
To start with, we should take a look at pain in the human body. Let's say you stub your toe hard on a piece of furniture. It is going to hurt, but why does it hurt? Inside your toe there are nerve endings specifically designed to sense pain, and there is an amazing little chemical chain reaction that sets off the pain signal.
Here's what happens. When you stub your toe, you damage some of the cells in your toe. Damaged cells release a chemical known as COX-2. The COX-2 is able to speed up the creation of another chemical, called prostaglandins. The prostaglandins do two things. First, they bind to the pain nerve endings, so the pain nerves in your stubbed toe start transmitting pain messages to the brain. The prostaglandins also cause inflammation. By opening up capillary walls, the prostaglandins let in more plasma, making your toe swell.
Pain is a complex thing involving many different chemicals. But if you want to cut way back on the pain signal getting to your brain, you would eliminate the prostaglandins. This would also eliminate a lot of the swelling. The way to cut down on the prostaglandins is to eliminate the COX-2. And that is what aspirin does.
Aspirin is also known by its chemical name, acetylsalicylic acid. It turns out that acetylsalicylic acid is just the right shape to get into the middle of a COX-2 molecule and gum it up. Once it is gummed up, the COX-2 can't produce prostaglandins, and both the swelling and the perception of pain go down.
Now you can better understand how aspirin is working. When you take aspirin, the acetylsalicylic acid molecules in the pill enter your blood stream. Those molecules flow all through your body. And they are going to bind to any COX-2 molecules they find. It just happens that anywhere with pain will have COX-2 floating around, and all of it gets gummed up. The pain goes away.
The fact that acetylsalicylic acid will bind to COX-2 anywhere in the body explains one of aspirin's more notorious side effects. For lots of people, aspirin causes an upset stomach. That's because aspirin also binds to COX-1 nearly as well as it binds to COX-2. It turns out that COX-1 is found in your stomach, where it keeps the stomach lining in shape by generating prostaglandins. When aspirin binds to COX-1, your stomach lining thins out and lets stomach acid start to irritate the lining. In severe cases the acid in the stomach can actually attack the lining and cause ulcers. People susceptible to this problem take something other than aspirin for their pain.
One other side effect of aspirin actually helps lots of people. People who are taking aspirin tend to form clots more slowly when they get cut. Prostaglandins are essential for blood clotting, and aspirin cuts back on the formation of all prostaglandins. Clots are also the source of things like heart attacks and strokes, so aspirin helps to prevent the formation of these dangerous clots. It only takes a little bit of aspirin every day to reduce the risk of heart attack and stroke.
There are several other aspirin benefits that scientists have been studying. It is thought that aspirin may help reduce the risk of things like Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease and certain cancers.
So you take an aspirin pill, the acetylsalicylic acid flows throughout your body, and it has a number of effects both good and bad. But mostly good, which is why people take aspirin. To your body, however, the acetylsalicylic acid looks out of place. So as soon as it enters your body, your liver detects the aspirin and starts the process of clearing it out. About four hours later, your liver has done its job and all of the aspirin has been defused and shuttled to your kidneys for elimination. About that time the pain and swelling starts to come back as the prostaglandins build up again. Time to pop another....
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Previously:
How igloos work
How the Predator UAV works
How retention ponds work
How water absorbers work
How melamine works
How digital music works
How coal mining works
How an economic depression works
How the liver works
How 3D movies work
How oil pipelines work
How jet packs work
How seismographs work
How Olympic technology works
How Personal Rapid Transit works
How 3G works
How the Global Position System (GPS) works
How octane works
How cruise missiles work
How submarines work
How miles work
How octane works
How food preservation works
How beer works
How holding your breath works
How smoke detectors work
How heat pumps work
How your night vision works
How concentrating solar collectors work
How your key fob works
How the common cold works
How the Large Hadron Collider Works
How making a TV show works
How dry cleaning works
How exoskeletons work
How an oil refinery works
How landfills work
How the Orion spacecraft works
The cutting edge in HDTV
Redefining the CD
How the HDMI cable scam works
How glow-in-the-dark toys work
How the subprime mortgage crisis works
How gift cards work
How Tasers work
How giant TV screens work
How foreclosure works
How Air Force One works
How wildfire fighting works
How vitamins work
How ejection seats work
How reattaching limbs works
How hot air balloons work
How paparazzi work
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How CDs work
How the Edsel worked
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How sharks work
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How diesel engines work
How water towers work
How the Dawn mission works
How Kassam rockets work
How the North American Eagle works
Why aren't we flying to work?
How tofu and soy milk work
How Colony Collapse Disorder works
How airbags work
How the U.S. income tax works
How gum works
How caffeine works
How Daylight Saving Time works
How a cruise missile works
How snow making works
© 2007, How Stuff Works Inc. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
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